Something I love about museums: the diverse locations captured inside those musky buildings are a perfect trigger for old memories. Between sweaty crowds of tourists and schoolchildren in droves, I can pick slivers of the past to entertain my mind away from the increasingly humid environment, and any unpleasant odours that may shift in my direction. It’s like travelling through time, only without the complicated speed-of-light-round-the-sun analogy that makes “real” physics impenetrable to me.

In a recent visit to London’s Museum of Natural History, just a second’s glance at a fully realized dinosaur skeleton was enough to send me back to the time where I actually lived it. Beastly green reptiles actually crossed the earth, dangerous at each corner of a two-dimensional map. The painted foliage around me quickly becomes green with life and sixty five million years flash before me, in a dashing blur of parallax scrolling and mode seven effects. Whisked away, I’m encased in a childlike world of wonder and discovery where anything belonging to that memory is possible. My mind re-shapes as a hero in a distant land; paradise in bloom. The world around me sees a much more distilled image: a blithering idiot, standing in one spot, with anyone attempting communication only hearing faint mumbles of “that time I played Chrono Trigger and it was awesome.” Sure my partner who has to carry around my empty husk for the rest of the day is pissed off, but at least I’m happy, like a small child. In childhood, you don’t really have to think of anything much, apart from what matters to you.


Pictured: Chrono Trigger, through the eyes of someone not quite in touch with reality.

I saw this rock later on, it was blue, and it reminded me of that ice level from Donkey Kong Country 2. Now before it becomes the focus of this piece I’d just like to make a point: I love how people are able to associate these overtly menial objects with old memories. One man’s refuse is another man’s treasure, as the saying goes. It is a beautiful practice to be able to draw out your own past from insignificant glimpses, or subliminal hints from afar. These mortal powers we all contain could essentially pull an adventure out of a dumpster, and in my far-too-optimistic-for-this-day-and-age mind, I’ve come to believe that the whole world is a canvas of beauty and mystery, waiting for our thoughts to paint a story that will be meaningful to our individual lives. Looking over my shoulder, I would have to tread some divine responsibility for my ridiculously sunny outlook on the world of Donkey Kong itself. Still, I’d never have dreamed it any other way. It was just a rock really: ask anyone. But most importantly, it meant something to me.

Somewhere between the ages of seven and ten, I lived this game. And for good reason too. I can fly. I can soar through the trees at blistering speeds. Physics go unquestioned as my hair keeps me afloat from danger, and I’m absorbed by the sounds of the jungle. Music fills the air, pulsing with a powerful tribal rave. Each thump-thump-thump of the drum is met with a squeak-squeak-squeak of enemies being crushed underneath my own weight; the synchronicity of the environment is enough to keep me absorbed here forever, in perfect Zen. Birds chirping, animals squawking, monsoons dripping down in front of my eyes; it created a powerful hypnosis whose effects made you forget that the entire world corresponded to four buttons on a piece of plastic. (If only the rest of the world was this simple.) Miraculously, the tether that binds us to this world is just a single wire that comes out from the television.


The aforementioned ice level. Pretty, ain't it not? I have a thing for shiny surfaces and snow.

As a young person, I loved this game. As an adult, I find it to be a relaxant, allowing passage between two distinctly different ages, while also appreciating some of the more subtle nuances that would have been invisible to me as a child. Off the bat, it pleases me to no end that I can say after fifteen years it is free from the burdens that hindsight brings, and that the expert design I came to remember wasn’t just an illusion created by a different me. Imaginative decisions such as a regularly changing environmental and level structure and a range of different ideas that don’t stop flowing even by the time the credits roll around (and even after) are the lifeblood of this title, showing a degree of care and attention that harks back to a different era. It starts off simple enough, with the kind of by-the-ropes introduction you’d expect from the platform genre. What unfolds then however is a truly enchanting realm, dispersing into a number of challenges that often require eyes from a handful of different perspectives to tackle. Moving through the bramble-infested skyline is difficult on its own, but having to race it through under a time limit, or battle against the transforming winds adds a layer of new challenge to similar environments. As a young boy I didn’t notice the amount of variety that came in this package. Now, the package itself is secondary to the impressive world that yesterdays design team managed to accumulate, keeping a considerably fresh experience apparent throughout its entirely mesmerizing runtime.

It’s not just the world around you that changes either, but you yourself. Developer Rare’s obsession with giving the player a significant number of characters to tackle is not a commodity that began with their Nintendo 64 efforts’ stupefying amount of playable personalities. (1) The reins of many exotic animals will be thrust upon you so frequently that it becomes a way of life. Gliding through the air under the guise of a web-shooting spider soon becomes second nature, as the game tricks your mind into believing in its solid physics. You know when to open a platform in the air in order to swiftly jump across; you know which position you should be to get a perfect strike with the swordfish’s point; you know how long you should be moving forward so to bounce every killer crocodile’s head with that erratic snake. In motion, when your mind is tweaked to its practices the experience is sublime. Before long you’ll find yourself dancing to the sounds of the savannah, scampering through mastered stages like the troubles once overcome with patience and control no longer exist. Engagement takes its meaty clamp on your life for so long that you know the ins and the outs of every mechanic on this planet. Or at least, you think you do.


Beautiful environments exist to be explored at every turn. It's truly a sight to behold.

My greatest fascination with this game - and why I write this with childhood so heavily in hand – is how the mechanics appear to replicate, and epitomize what being young is all about. Take a look at the setting and imagine the kind of backdrops we’ll be involved in during this long adventure: the deck of a pirate ship to inside of a volcano, from a haunted house to misty woods, exploring an icy cave then emerging halfway atop a castle with a zeppelin commanding from above. Naturally beautiful areas are recreated for exploration; so much so that it makes exotic holidays with your parents and the uncle who wandered in whilst planning that much more mysterious (I wonder if there is a flying sword living inside that volcano) and a decade of geography lessons that much more bearable. As children, the world is full of inexplicable mystery and wonder, slowly becoming unravelled with the flow of time. There is no Santa Claus, as far as I care to believe, but there is a beautiful world packed with all sorts of hidden treasures out there; a feeling, which my young life in this Country helped provoke and prolong in me for a later time.

The world’s lore is tied up in around forty stages; some hidden so fiendishly that upon finding them you’ll think the game has broken with something much more uncanny taking its place. There lies its true depth. Tearing down the digital walls you once thought were concrete is akin to the first time you crossed that side of the road, where your parents told you not to play. A great deal of power has entered you, as if anything is possible. Adrenaline kicks in and your mind starts to race around, with the desire to explore overriding the guilt of being in this forbidden valley. It’s all about the thrill of breaking boundaries and running around outside of where you’re supposed to go; a natural compulsion that Donkey Kong Country 2 actually encourages in the player. Constantly you’re teased with the promise of secrets, and information just off camera where you don’t think you can go, followed by the desire to go back and mine every level for what it’s worth. And as I said, if you’re really good you can find the game’s biggest enigma: the hidden Lost World, whose mystifying post-credit existence will twist your perception of simplistic videogames and the world around you forever. (2)


You can search all you like, but you'll never find it. Unless you have ninja skills. Or Gamefaq's.

I also have to admit that as a person who’s just achieved reaching life in his early twenties, I can no longer find these secrets like I could back when a two digit age seemed a lifetime away. I’ve sifted through stacks of old Nintendo magazines, looking for guides I may have used to help me finish the game, ending to no avail. It must be a growing up thing.

Of course, if you didn’t grow up with a Super Nintendo with a young impressionable mind between the ages of something and whatever its unlikely that you can relate, but this was my experience, and that is what I would like to share. Every lifelong gamer has a title (or a few) which is eternally burned into their memories, to on occasion be surfaced to rekindle the brightly burning flames of “those happy times.” This one is mine.


Rare certainly knew how to make blue skies and sparkling oceans. The whole game feels alive!

Retro goggles be gone! Do I still listen to the soundtrack when I’m in the shower because it was actually good or because of the memories I associate with it? The answer would be both. Sound designer David Wise mixed a great array of ambient, exciting and dramatic tunes that perfectly complement the levels they belong to, but they are also great standalone mood pieces (I only have to whisper the name Stickerbrush Symphony for most people to agree) only mildly pushed in the same direction by the innate joy I’ve already tied to this experience. Genre fans, retro heads, and depressives in need of some ambient choons: this it is definitely a game I encourage you all try out at some point, as you’re sure to find something to enjoy within this motley package.

This game’s level of depth, mystery and worldliness was only followed up by Banjo-Kazooie’s ultra-hidden eggs and ice key, which played another childhood obsession of mine a bit later. Nowadays, those classic Rare tropes seem to have fallen away from existence, being bound by the era they were conceived in. My advice: grab a copy now and get yourself on the next backwards ride around the sun, stepping off when you’re approximately eight years old. I’m confident you’ll be in for an exciting journey, both in game and for the many years to come.


One of my favourite box-art's ever. There's so much going on, really gives a shape of things to come.

(1)See Donkey Kong 64: the game that asks you to play each of its worlds five times with five different characters, collecting five different golden bananas, fifty regular bananas, a bunch of banana coins, five blueprints, something called a crystal coconut, these flittering fairy things that only appear while looking through a special camera, and new abilities on every stage. Did I mention you have to do this with every character? I used to lap this up as a kid, but going back to it today just makes me wonder how much I’d rather be doing last nights washing up.

(2) Having a world exist beyond the credits back then blew my tiny little mind. Its only now that I realize Super Mario World did it first, but whatever. You couldn’t play as a monkey in that game, making Donkey Kong infinitely better.

Hi again, how are you today? That's so nice! Me, I've had quite a miserable morning actually. My corkboard knocked over a glass of water damaging my magazine collection, and I forced myself to play the last two levels of The Conduit so I could get this up today. But on the plus, yes, I do put posting stuff on Destructoid ahead of my own emotional well being, which I hope can be the shape of things to come. So moving on, I'd like to first thank you for the feedback on my last write-up, and I hope you enjoy this one too!

As a prideful student in creative writing, there exists a pool of words associated with gaming that have been hung and stretched to the realm of cliché for so long that I won’t allow myself to use them. This can be a real pain sometimes when I want to explain something simple, continually having to replace the word “hype” with “press generated around the title in the months coming up to its release,” but it manages to satisfy that egotist side of the brain that keeps me working as a writer. Each time one of my most respected journalists or bloggers - therefore one who I envy the talent - writes a thoughtful piece using one or more of the handful of random words I’ve decided that I don’t like, I can quite easily re-adjust my beret, tip my tiny John Lennon glasses, and snark down at their efforts like a giant douchebag. Ha, Official Nintendo Magazine, you just used the word “casual” to describe a type of game, which I disagree with: ho ho ho, I exclaim, before weeping openly in my palms because I’ll never be as good as them. Whatever gets you through the day.

In not using certain words, I like to think that I’ve developed immunity to their actual meanings. The convoluted lashings of hyperbole and sugar-rush excitement infused into PR speak for example, has become so ridiculous over years of exposure that I’m not entirely sure whom their audience even is (those of us who are used to the gaming industry can read through it, but are also the only people who see PR?). As for the aforementioned case of hype; well, isn’t that just when a developer decides to release little to no information on their game apart from a cool sounding concept, say, a Wii first-person-shooter done properly with Xbox 360 quality graphics, and from there on wait for the yellow submarine to whisk them away into the magical valley where all of this comes true.


This will be better than all of your games put together, plus a million times infinity. I should know. I watched the press conference on Youtube.

To be honest, the reason I have a dislike for this word in particular is not just its overuse (1) but because in most cases it can be interchanged with the much nicer word, “hope,” just without the dressing of a different vowel sound. The Conduit was hyped to be good; The Conduit was hoped to be good. That single letter doesn’t seem like much but changes a lot. In the world we inhabit today, I notice that the former of the two will often be used to assume that any product in question will be amazing, leading to the unfortunate side effect of copious usage of expletives and the Caps Lock key when it only garners a seven on Megacricket, or whatever. The latter on the other hand follows a calmer train of thought with none of the build up, followed only by rations of mild disappointment when an item turns out not to be as impressive as its potential. Hyped, Hoped. You can see why I’m not a fan of the word.

But lets not dwell on semantics for any longer (2), and get onto the bulk of the matter. My own experiences with this game.

The Conduit was a game that had a lot of promise, and I really, really wanted it to live up to that. I’ve actually written about my anticipation for the game before, comparing the unique weaponry and alien bug quashing from the trailer to that of Turok 2 – still one of my absolute favourite shooters of all time – hoping that this new Wii title would be like a second coming of those bygone days. Massive, powerful guns slaying legions of monsters for no better reason than because. An enormous lifespan, with the opportunity to explore a selection of beautiful, exotic locations. Maybe throw in a couple of cheats too: disco-dancing enemies, why the hell not. Combine all of that with pointer controls and that’s my dream shooter right there. I had been completely aware that this illusion would be crushed after reading the streams of (negative) coverage, but this is what I wanted The Conduit to be like. It’s a real shame that positive thinking isn’t enough to carry a person love in this world.

After mediocre reviews, I thought waiting out for the price drop would be the best option. Fortunately, I managed to snap up a copy of the special edition (3) last week in a deal, along with my second choice of Boom Blox Bash Party, which ironically, is going to turn out to be the more enjoyable of the two. Where on earth did things start to go wrong?


The back of the case informs me that this is "the most fluid and intuitive shooter on the Wii" but of course, I have no understanding of such meaningless terms. *scoffs down at box*

Upon booting up The Conjwit for the first time I notice two things. One: I really like the title music. Its sort of reminiscent of the pulsing electric tunes heard in Perfect Dark, which certainly deserves a point to High Voltage for making me remember that fantastic title. The second observation is cheats. Oh sweet mother those lovely beauties of yore are back, and among other goodies hidden away in the extras menu too. Gently brush your eyes past the concept art dross, that every game worthy enough to be printed on a disc these days appears to require as an unlockable even though nobody on this planet cares to stare at artwork on their television more than once due to an irrational need to say that they’ve seen all of what the game has to offer, and you’ll find Achievements. Sweet. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun getting those. The attention given to presenting a nice cover to this book is apparent already, and I commend the developers for making a product where even tweaking the options is a pleasant excursion. Well done! Its leagues ahead of the rush job that made up Red Steel’s menu screens. I’m already feeling good, and I haven’t even got to the game yet.

And that good feeling is sustained, at least up until the point I get into my first combat setting. Great! I think, as I walk into the room with old Bob and his six or so identical brothers, proceeding to gun them all down for some reason, because the door won’t open unless I do. Yeah, I murmur, as I go down the next corridor into the same room again, taking out Bob’s clearly inbred cousins who seem to be a little miffed that I murdered the rest of their family. Sigh, I let out, as… I’m sure you get the picture now. If Halo/Killzone/Metroid/insert your favourite here were the titanium of shooters, The Conduit would be the cardboard.

This game has no soul.

Lets make it clear that there are some good, solid systems working behind The Conduit. Pointing and aiming is great, (I didn’t even notice the lock on until half way through) the default controls work nice, and there’s a layer of not brilliant, but pleasing visuals to tide you on. Problem is, I just don’t feel anything. Attacks have no weight to speak of, and even though every weapon looks different, they all merge into the same thing. Existence is only pointing and clicking, with the occasional corridor trawl. There’s no thumping heartbeat to carry you through its campaign. No points where you’ll stop, and take a moment to bask in the amazing world built around you. You’re just doing stuff, for the sake of moving forward. Because that is all there is to do. Its a consistent flat liner, with maybe one or two tremors at various points through its campaign, hoping to present the illusion that possibly, at some point it will spring to life and start dancing like the best of them.

Unfortunately, to my disappointment, I can’t say it ever did.


I'm one of those shallow people who thinks that reloading animation is everything in a shooter, but when an enemy can deplete your entire health in the time it takes to insert a clip, maybe its not so welcome.

Looking deeper, I can see how this game became devoid of a steady pulse, using the mystic practices of where-have-I-seen-this-before? Let us do the list. At first, we are presented with a core game concept, consisting of scanning the walls for various plot points or door switches. Fair enough. There’s some nice organic alien weaponry in there, wrapped around a government conspiracy theory plot. The good guy at the start turns out to be the bad guy about three levels in, and vice-versa. Security must have forgotten to take out no less than four explosive gas canisters from an airport waiting room. A conversation takes place over the credits, presenting a twist to the plot. Those little screaming grunts from Halo are in it. It’s at this point that I realized where the true nature of The Conduit lies.

I have no problem at all with games borrowing ideas from each other, as long as they’re executed in a beneficial way. However, it quickly becomes clear that The Conduit simply a checklist of the last few years’ good ideas in the FPS genre, compressed together in a single package. Problem is, they’ve been compressed to such an extent that the lovely insides’ fans love to feast on got squeezed out in the process, leaving nothing more than a ground up shell to play with. The first rule taught in essay writing is not to draw from too many sources because cohesive argument will get lost underneath the pressure, and that seems to be what happened here. In an attempt to comprise everything great about the genre, The Conduit has fallen into a kind of limbo between the excellent and the awful.


Kevin Sorbo plays Prometheus: your talkative, objective-handing-out sidekick. He sounds a lot more black than I remember him.

Those cheats that got me excited earlier. There are six of them. Three are obtained with the promotional code on the back of the art book, and amount to nothing more than “exclusive skins.” The game’s Xbox style achievement system is nothing special either; with goals not veering any further than your standard complete a level, get all the hidden items, kill a certain number of enemies with a certain gun, and so on. To pad on with some clichés relevant to the situation, The Conduit’s beauty is truly only skin deep. Don’t judge a book by its collector’s edition. Etc.

What confuses me is how High Voltage seemed to be dedicated to bring the game that no other developer could be bothered to do on the Wii, and have it turn out the way it did. Reading over past interviews, it’s clear that the team wanted to make something special, and I really respect them for that. The expensive coating they’ve produced and shined is apparent throughout, but too much stride is lost on the actual game aspect. Here are some assertions I feel the need to make. Timesplitters is still a more enjoyable game, and that came out over half a decade ago. Perfect Dark was even longer. Heck, I even enjoyed blowing stuff up in the buggy, unfinished Red Steel more, and that is coming from a person who couldn’t finish it because his (brand new) disc glitches out and refuses to load a level. What did The Conduit fail to do for me, that all these games managed years ago?


The Conduit. More like... The Condu-shit The Can't-duit. (The Videogame quip what I've done)

I finished everybody’s favourite Double Fine game, Psychonauts quite recently, and to be completely frank, I can’t say I enjoyed playing much of it at all. I encountered far too many graphical and sound glitches for my liking (4) and some difficult controls, which were far too big of a flaw to overlook. However, it had a certain charm that stopped me from completely disliking it. Character and personality course through the invisible veins of Tim Schafer’s effort, even if the outside is a little scratched. It unfolds like an experience, rather than a game, which I believe is the central pillar that all quality products are built upon. Technical wizardry is nice, but if it has no soul, all you have is a series of button presses.

The message needs to be clear: your game doesn’t need shiny-coated graphics, scanning the environment, or any of that superficial stuff to be accepted by an audience. All it needs is to be entertaining. In the five hours and fifty-five minutes I spent completing the single player, part of it was in replaying sections over due to an unknown death, but the majority was walking through the same corridors, fighting through indistinguishable laboratories, and trawling through similar sewer levels. Play the game, and judge for yourself whether you found it entertaining.

Gaming gets my blood pumping like no other medium can. The question to developers is, does it have that effect on you?


Characters. With character. Also a hint of personality. That's what I like to see.

(1) You know when you say a word over and over and over and it seems to lose all its meaning. It’s a bit like that. Even the word “graphics” is a stretch for me to use these days. I think it was only the italics mid-way through the paragraph that prevented me from changing it to “visuals.” Silly boy.

(2) I’ve actually been criticised by both my tutor and myself for never failing to write an anecdotal, overlong introduction to my write-ups, that have little or nothing to do with the actual piece at hand. I kind of like providing this ‘context’ (stretching the word) and I hope other people do too, but if anyone can recommend a medication I could take to stop these unnecessary words spilling from my keyboard it would be greatly appreciated, so I can at least pass my non-fiction class this year.

(3) Special Edition to which I don’t believe a regular edition exists. It only seems to be available in second-hand stores, where it’s likely that the previous owner just forgot to bring the slipcase with them when they traded it. Kind of makes those exclusive unlock codes redundant too, since they’re probably exactly the same between every copy of the game out there. Actually I feel like a fool for using the word probably there.

(4) Most notably, speech refusing to load so characters mouths jabber up and down like soundless puppets, and one moment in which entering into a boss fight presented me with a picture of some sky, meaning I had to fight the battle without being able to see a thing I was doing. Honestly I was glad the game was so short, since I constantly feared falling into some kind of glitch that would make me have to start the entire thing over again.

Hey Destructiod! How are you? That's nice, I've been quite well too! It's been a good while since I've posted anything on here, with final year university/work placements and whatnot to deal with, but I've managed to club some free time together (not spent playing videogames) to write down one of my thoughts of recent times, and present it in this handy blog form. (now with footnotes!) So, here's this thing I made about the evolution of the traditional role-playing game, and how it has changed over the years. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope to see you again soon!

You know those times when you’re on and off with a girl for about three years, whose constant presence within your mind is distracting from everything else in your life even though its clear that you should just be a man and finish her properly because you can’t bear to have those lingering eyes over your shoulder anymore? If yes, well, you’re in the minority but good luck with that I suppose. For everyone else, that was just meant to be a nonsense analogy to describe the needlessly prolonged relationship I had with Final Fantasy III.


No, not the other Final Fantasy III. I'm talking about this monster.

This Christmas would have marked quite a momentous occasion: our three-year anniversary living together. That’s not to say things were perfect between us however. She would lie solemn on my shelf of un-played games, only providing the occasional whisper that maybe, one of these days, I should actually go back and finish what I started instead of getting continually distracted by other things. I would choose not to listen, and go back to playing Pokémon. It was a nice thing we had going on, but like everything in this humble life, it had to change at some point. “Three years, that’s a little excessive don’t you think?” she used to moan from high atop my room. The story goes that eventually it got to that point where I’d finally had enough, so a little while ago, I decided that I would finish the job once and for all, not plugging another cartridge into my DS until it was over. Things were said, tears were shed, some feelings may have changed during the time period, but around two weeks after booting up my fourteen-hour save created around the 2006 holiday season, the deed was finally done. I’d gotten through another title in my favourite long running RPG series. Go me.

But after that, I felt different. Like my begrudging hatred for the old game had somehow intertwined with a kind of love, to form a brand new feeling; ambivalent in ways, but not entirely unpleasant. What was this magical force that had swept over me? Could it be: did I actually enjoy this horrible grind of a game?


You're lucky you're so pretty, otherwise I dont know how I'd put up with you. A bit like my girlfriend.

Going through Final Fantasy III was frustrating to say the least, but in a way it was also rather refreshing, as towards the end and upon its conclusion it piqued some interesting thoughts about the role-playing genre, and how it has changed over the decades as new fans and new technology have become available. To begin to explain the effect this game had on me I’ll have to recall a couple of brief experiences with this beast of a game, mainly those aspects which caught me off guard and proceeded to make my hair fall out. However to begin, I feel some details of myself are necessary so you can see exactly what type of person decided to put himself through this difficult campaign.

Three short things: I like my desk tidy, my room clean, and my shelved games done. I’m also quite the fan of triadic structure; the sharpest of all written structures; but that’s a digression this piece doesn’t require. I’ll let you know first that my interest in playing Final Fantasy III was simply to strike a number off a long list, and my compulsion to play may have been due to a want to finish the unfinished. The last RPG in this numeration I managed to get to the end of was number four on the Game Boy Advance, which is debatably the game in which the series dropped its more “traditional” roots and began its larger focus on characters and plotline. I enjoy exposing myself to a lot of different genres, FFIII fitting the “classic role-player” niche – but let it be also known that I dropped Final Fantasy I for good a few years before III was ever announced (again, the GBA compilation re-release) after reaching the final boss and realizing it was far too difficult for me to ever accomplish. (1) It was probably a combination of the attractive visuals, adorable characters and elusive “unreleased outside Japan” status that lulled me back into bothering with this classic format once more.


Seriously. I do barely 1000 damage per turn and it has twenty-times that hit points plus healing magic which will always recover 9999. I only wish my level was as high as the one in that screen grab!

Now with that out of the way, I can begin to discuss my responses to this game’s foreign structure, starting with the format that dungeons take. In short, I hated it. Allow me to describe your typical Final Fantasy III dungeon experience. Upon arriving at the next plot related cavern, you’ll realize that the monsters inside are just powered enough to do a significant amount of damage to your entire party with each battle, and your reward is more often than not a paltry amount of experience and gold. The fact that the MP system only allows you to take a limited number of healing spells inside each one does not help this matter. Finally, after a long while of fighting random battles you will inadvertently enter a boss chamber who will then proceed to kick your arse in six ways from Sunday, easily losing you up to an hours play with the only residual matter being a very bitter taste. Recalling this now reminds me exactly why I left this game on the shelf two times before I dedicated all my efforts into finishing it.

This initial gripe also ties into the second aspect I disliked about Final Fantasy III. The learning curve, in particular, that of the final boss. Now by the time I’d finally reached the games’ closing chapters, I’d gotten used to the dungeon format. Grind to the end, teleport out before the fight, then go back through while powered up. Simple, and by the time I decided to go anywhere near what I knew was the final room, I made sure, especially sure, that I could slaughter all of the beasts leading up to it in a few moves. Climbing was easy, heck, even the first antagonist that could be better described as “the main bad guy” went down within a few turns, barely a scratch to my name. I was confident that I had the game on its last legs, wistfully journeying on to the pillars of darkness where the true endgame lied.

Looking back, I now concede my confidence to be a foolish mistake. What the hell did I know!

One turn, nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine damage across the board, hour lost, dead. That bitterness has once again returned.


A decade and a half ago, this would be the screen that I both fear and loathe. And cry upon an unending, inevitable stream of failure.

Apparently, there were four “optional” bosses it was possible fight before taking on the final challenge (I put optional in quotations because they’re not really optional at all: you have to face all of them in order to power down the final boss’ strongest attack, which otherwise will always hit for 9999. Even a max-out party couldn’t withstand a single blow) and each of them were far more powerful than anything I’d faced beforehand. That was nice of the game to not tell me anything of the sort at all. After checking gamefaq’s, which had become a necessity by this point, I decided to spend a climb the tower once more, beating each of the “optional” monsters, and facing the less powered Cloud of Darkness, with the knowledge that this time I would certainly win.

Four turns, and my team whose unrelenting courage and strife had crushed everything that came beforehand, had become overpowered. Dead. Again.

I goddamn hated this game.

Hated it so much that I had to finish it. So much that I couldn’t keep my thoughts off training up, becoming stronger and finally beating it. This was my Everest. And I couldn't have been happier with it.

This was the first time in recent years that I’ve ever experienced a final fight that could be described as, for lack of a better term, shit-your-pants hard. As a matter of fact, the third time I approached this monstrosity after training at least ten levels higher than our previous encounter, I was literally shaking with each passing turn, in fear of having the holy heck torn out of my person. Then, totally unexpectedly, I won, and was flushed with a great sense of accomplishment. I’d struggled for a long time through a hard battle worth fighting, and I actually came out alive. Most importantly, I had earned this win.

Did you notice anything wrong with those initial gripes with Final Fantasy III? Lets go and take a look at them again shall we. The monsters in this dungeon are too hard: why can’t I just mash A to win every battle? The boss killed me: why couldn’t I beat it first time? I can’t finish the game off: why doesn’t it hold my hand all the way through and treat me like I’ve no idea where I am or what I’m doing. Where’s the challenge?


I remember fighting this guy for three hours straight, in a long, drawn out showdown of life and death. After his era though, final bosses seem to have lost a bit of their edge.

Final Fantasy XII was an excellent game, one of the best in my opinion, but the climactic showdown of that felt like nothing more than hitting the attack button, and occasionally dipping into a vast supply of healing resources. Lost Odyssey’s environmental level cap made sure that no monster was too strong, if you knew the simple steps on how to fight them. I think back to my Gamecube favourites, Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos, whose final bosses were more like foot soldiers, to be crushed underneath the heels of a party that could take the world twice over if they felt the need to. Great games, but none of them will have you touching cloth (2) as the end draws near.

It's not a judgement I'm making, but an observation. Final Fantasy III succeeds in a way that most role-playing games of today have lost. Its very minimalist story is pushed forward by a desire to succeed in the actual game itself: not the other way around. For myself at least, “story comes first” has been the case with most ventures into the genre. Of course, not to say that’s at all a bad thing. I love the current trends in the genre and the sweeping tale’s that they tell. It’s strange to think that those engaging archetypes I’ve come to know and love today were the predecessors of a genre I mainly go into for its beautifully crafted plotlines and sensual experience.

Currently, my time is being spent with Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King for the PS2. Regardless of being made in the last few years, I was shocked to find the Dragon Quest difficulty remained intact, (3) with every boss fight and every random encounter being a battle for ones life, with the prospect of death at every turn. And guess what. I absolutely adore it.

The role-playing genre has changed a lot over the years, and now, so has this old fan.


Weirdly brilliant, brilliantly weird; I can't get enough of this world. I probably just have something for bright colours.

(1) Strangely, just a few days ago when I decided to plug the cartridge in once more and see what was so difficult, I managed to down the final boss in a single attempt, without seeing his 9999-point healer a single time. I guess I just got lucky. On a mildly related note, I can now have my list include 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10-2, and 12.

(2) The term, touching cloth, gently refers to the point in which a person needs to use the bathroom so badly that a small amount of poop has protruded from the anus and is “touching the cloth” of the underwear. Apparently it’s a commonly used phrase in Britain, although the first time I heard of it was on the obscure sketch comedy, “That Mitchell and Webb Look.” I would recommend to anyone interested in intelligent witticisms and poo-based humour.

(3) Discovered after a brief fling with the copy of Chapters of the Chosen I picked up quite recently, who now resides on my shelf beside the Pokémon Platinum I just had arrive here. Expect a Dragon Quest written piece similar in tone to this one in around two to three years.

The premise is simple. I like videogames and so do you, so I’ve had some fun compiling together some of the recent game’s I’ve enjoyed, not enjoyed, or are currently anticipating, and gave a couple of thoughts on each. Easy, huh! I hope you find something you like here; there are a couple of weirdo’s ahead that you’ve likely either forgotten about or have such bad memories of that they’ve burned out of your skull. (I’m looking at you, Geist) But anyway, please read on, and have a nice time with the ride!

Games that I started about an hour ago and have made me again realize how much I adore JRPG’s: Eternal Sonata

I haven’t played a proper RPG in a good while, but Eternal Sonata had been lazing on my shelf waiting to be played for so long, that I just couldn’t resist it any more. And the result: me sitting giddy on the couch, drawn in by its pretty graphics and enchanting musical score. That was within ten minutes.

There’s just something about JRPG’s which makes me want to gawk at the screen letting my mind wander free, and this game certainly began with it all. A beautifully realised fantasy setting, the typically stupid-yet-I-don’t-know-why-I-like-her-enthralling female character, lots of spiky hair, and a half-hour in even gave my first androgynous she-he (Beat) that I’m still not fully sure about. Yes, from the short hour’s play that I got this game already comes with a massive recommendation, bringing back memories of some of my old favourites; Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy XII, and Tales of Symphonia, in the process.

I can’t wait to enjoy some more RPG’ing in Sonata’s world later on! If you’re a genre fan it’s likely either on your list or you’ve already played it. If not, it’s still possible to get a few laughs from the slightly silly dialogue, such as the bit where Polka asks her mother if she’s afraid to touch her any more *snicker* or the part in the moonlight where she asks Frederick to come visit her forest. *retarded guffaw*


If you put a letter "F" in the middle of Sonata, it also sounds a bit like Eternal Sonfarta, which has the word "fart" in it. This is funny, for some reason.


Games that I wish I could play right now because I’ve been drooling over pictures of the new ones but someone deleted my file: Pokémon Platinum

If you’re like me who obsessively checks serebii.net every few days to see if any new information has come out, you’ll likely be lusting over pictures of the upcoming Heart Gold and Soul Silver release right now. I was, and it really makes me long to play my old games again! So off I went one day, down to the girlfriends occupied R4 card where my half finished save resided; only to be greeted with a message saying there was no existing game data. I asked her if she knew anything about this, to which she said the card had been recently acting up a bit. This was met with my screams of “YOU MURDERED MY MANAPHY,” some tears, some exclamation points, and ultimately me vying for her blood. Ten minutes later, we got in, I’d settled down a bit and I was fine.

Anyone who plays the game knows that losing a Pokémon save file is like losing a best friend. Actually worse,; it’s like losing six of them, and I’ll never understand the people who can just casually erase their file to start a new game, without spending three hours beforehand transferring their captured monsters to someone else’s DS or Pokémon Stadium. It’s just wrong! Or maybe I just have some kind of condition, I don’t know. All I can say for sure though is, the moral of this tale is that pirating games is wrong, and you should always buy a real copy if you want to be safe with your save.

On second thoughts, why should I listen to my girlfriends opinion on what happened here, when she’s a blatant buneary boiler.


See what I did there! Buneary Boiler! Oh alright, have a cute picture to make up for the terrible puns.


Games that are kind of a bit boring to be honest but I’m slogging through for the sake of finishing them: Geist, Madworld

Having earned a place in my Gamecube collection for about three years, but only being played for around three (sets of ten) minutes, Geist is one of those titles I’ve been determined to finish. It’s a little known title that was announced around two years prior to its release - looking a bit crap both then and there – and in that time gaining the notoriety of being the Gamecube’s big FPS. It never lived up to that notoriety, but what did surface was a decent little shooter with an equal balance of clever and utterly terrible ideas. It’s not bad.

You may already know that you play a ghost with the ability to possess people and objects, and if you didn’t, you do now. This leads the way for some smart puzzle-shooting game play, such as some nice moments where rats must be taken possession to find secret passageways to new areas, or some cool looking areas where you get to take part in a computer simulation. These are some genuine highlights you’ll experience while playing this game.

They’re also some of the only ones, considering the proceeding list of not game-breaking, but annoying problems nonetheless. For one, it looks the dog (and not a particularly attractive dog) apart from some of the texture popping moments witnessed in the virtual world. Gunplay feels clumsier than a ladder made entirely of bread, with headshots being about as effective as arching down and firing at your invisible legs. I always keep my DSi handy in case I need to check gamefaq’s to solve an obscure riddle –which is often – and the game is totally streamlined so you have no freedom to explore off the beaten path, for example, one “puzzle” wouldn’t allow me to scare a man by possessing a fire extinguisher he was staring directly at, unless I got him to move closer to it first. I’ve found at least one wall that I could run through, and regardless of all this, I still think it’s a decent game. It’s short, which is quite nice, and somehow engaging enough to keep me for a few hours at a time. Not bad, and recommended if you have absolutely nothing else to do.


This is one of the prettier screens. If it does nothing for you, you're a bit out of luck.

Now Madworld on the other hand, is the total opposite of that. It is a very nice game to look at, but I just don’t feel it to be engaging at all. I’d go as far enough to call it boring, which I hate, because I was really looking forward to playing this game back when it was revealed. Combat hasn’t gotten much more than swishing around at the same few guys while battling an awkward camera, and the primary reason I continue to play it is for the occasionally excellent commentary. This is unfortunate in that it has to continuously repeat itself. During a game of human darts, I had to listen to Greg Proops’ erotic tale of himself, a dwarf and a donkey no fewer than four times in around a three minute period, which made me wonder whether Platinum couldn’t have just put a limit (one) on the amount of times a line can be said, or at least spread out some of the more random lines that are uttered, rather than having a constant, filling barrage of the same thing over and over.

That said, I have only managed about three levels so far, only being able to play one per session without tiring of it. Maybe the story or the rest of the soundtrack will redeem it in my eyes, but so far, colour me unimpressed.


Who knew that murdering leigons of criminals with a chainsaw could be so tiresome.


Games I brought to fill in spaces in my collection in which one turned out to be alright and the other utter tosh: Donkey Konga 2, Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble

Before satisfyingly slotting in my latest two five-pound finds next to Donkey Konga and Viewtiful Joe 2 respectively, I thought it might be quite nice to play them. Donkey Konga first, which I thought was quite inventive back in the day. It plays just like Taiko no Tatsujin, but with charmless, four-frame images of the main monkey himself moving in the background instead of adorable little drum creatures. Plus bongos!

The only song I could recognise from the soundtrack was everybody’s favourite All Star by Smash Mouth, which I proceeded to play. Hang on a second though. The instruction manual says that this song is performed by a band called Squish Moth, not Smash Mouth of whom we all (Ben Stiller and probably Mike Myers) love. Yup, it’s another bunch of covers. Good covers, mind, and the game is still rather fun to play, even though it does lack terribly in its presentation. I’m glad I managed to find it all the same – and I just need two more pairs of the peripheral before I can bring four player bongo nights back!


Having seen the Japanese track listings now makes me want to import. Katamari on the Rocks in a Nintendo game! It just feels unholy enough to try.

Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble is a real shame. It’s a shame that the two excellent games that receded before had to be brought down by this sullied mess of a title. It’s a shame that half of the controls have been changed, so I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time. It’s a shame that the designers chose to go down the four-player beat-em-up route for their final console Joe, instead of completing the trilogy and addressing the twist ending in the last one. And it’s a goddamn shame that barely any of it is explained, just why?

A Smash Bros. alike Viewtiful Joe sounds great on paper, but it’s just one of those ideas that could never, ever be executed in an playable way. Four players, time-altering techniques, and massive explosions; yup, that’s what you get, and it’s barely possible to keep track of any of it! Within seconds of a four player match up you’ll lose your character on screen and have no idea what’s going on, not just because of the general clutter, but because nothing at all is explained. Sometimes you’ll be sprung into a quick time event which doesn’t even tell you the buttons you’re supposed to be pressing. Other times, you’ll have an objective that gets lost in the mess of the rest of the screen. It’s entirely pointless!

Then again, this game was meant to tie in with the animé (that wasn’t even released over here) which partly explains its reasons for being so awful. Come on Capcom, you can do better than this.


Can you tell what's going on? I can vouch that its ten times worse in motion.


Games that I find the spelling mistakes on the map screen quite amusing: Trauma Centre: Second Opinion

Every time. Every time you enter the map, which is before every single operation, there is one great, glaring mistake at the bottom of the screen. “Yuo will move automatically on the map screen.”

Now, I don’t know if Atlus is in on something big here, or if I’m just falling behind my New Words in the English language, but I’m around 87% sure that “Yuo” is a mistake for “You.” That, or it’s a way of abbreviating “Yu-Gi-Oh,” which makes little sense due to the distinct lack of card games apparent so far in the Trauma Centre series. Either way, I find it quite humorous.

Oh, and the game is really good too, by the way.


You'll know when you hit the learning curve. It's that early mission where you fail within seconds and have no idea how it happened. It hurts, hard.


Games I managed to preview in a dream last night: The Beatles: Rock Band

When I’m not dreaming about hot chicks, sports cars, being an international superhero spy for the government and various other things that men dream about, I’m probably dreaming about videogames. And fortunately for me, last night’s sleep-engaged escapades took me on a full tour of Harmonix Massachusetts office where I got an exclusive hands-on with their upcoming music game, The Beatles: Rock Band. What else can I say, but it’s shaping up very nicely!

I’ll start by saying that the dreamlike, feel-good style of The Beatles has been perfectly captured in the build that I played. Landscapes and colour schemes are constantly changing to the sound of the music, from the beautifully lush, 60’s infused paradise which performs in the background of Eight Days a Week, to the seedy alcohol-and-urine smelling bar scene in any of the songs where Ringo takes vocals. Yes, apparently one new feature is that you can actually smell the venue you’re i taking the series to brave new, oftentimes unpleasant levels. Also new to the series is the way the note highways move. Occasionally, mid song, they may switch from the regular Rock Band top-to-bottom style, to flying Donkey Konga-like from the left, diagonally, or even with symbols that aren’t even represented on the guitar which made my play session that much more confusing to carry on with. This perfectly captures the trippy style that the band took with some of their later songs, and I can’t wait to see more of it!

Also, if what I heard was correct as I was flicking through the completed setlist, there will be some Monkees songs in The Beatles: Rock Band. Yet another reason to purchase this game if you’re a fan of music in the 1960’s decade.

In fact, The Beatles: Rock Band was such a good game in my dream that my first instinct when I awoke was to check the Playstation Store and see if the Abbey Road DLC was up, so I could play it straight away! It wasn’t.


This is in fact nothing like how The Beatles: Rock Band will look, if my dream is anything to go by.


Well that about wraps up my first edition of Random Recommendations, which I thoroughly enjoyed putting together. Who knows, maybe I’ll make this a regular thing each time I play a set of new games, just to give some of those old titles the words that they deserve. Anyway now, I’ve gone on long enough. Until next time, ta-ta.

Bonus Points for remembering what classic trailer I stole that last line from!

I'm a whore for traffic that I don't deserve in any way, and everyone knows the best way to accumulate that is to vocally disagree with any Super Special Serious Sterling article that comes my side, scour the writing for five hours, and then high-and-mightily exploit all traces of possible bias, trolling, or being fat that I can find. In fact, my bowl of Alphabets this morning spelled a message saying that on this day I would bring great things to a community, and in those exact words! I believe it was my destiny to write this piece, and as such, I spent a very difficult five minutes of my life compiling a list of the many reasons why he is utterly wrong. I present the labours of those hardships to you now.

A few days ago, you may have noticed an article posted by Destructoid's very own Jim Sterling which was a vain attempt to prove that Pokémon Red was better than Pokémon Blue. As the intellectual readers among us will already know, this statement is indeed, completely false. In fact, regardless what the internet and many other sources would have you believe, I now know that the very existence of Pokémon Red and Blue was completely evaporated off the face of the earth, with the holy light of a new chariot, obliterating everything as it made its descent upon all participating retailers. Yes, I'm talking about Yellow. How can you compare two games that don't exist? Only a mad man could possibly achieve such a feat. Because he is mad.

If you need any more reasons why Yellow comes out on top and makes Red and Blue its eternal bitch, just read on for an education you require.





1.)Pikachu is the best Pokémon ever and the opinion of anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

If Pikachu isn't the best Pokémon ever, why is he the main character? It just makes sense. You can get Pikachu in everything these days: from a Pikachu shaped car, to alarm clocks, to creepy pyjamas, toothbrushes, cuddly toys, action figures, pregnancy tests, a strange pedometer thing you stick on your belt where he runs away if you don't answer his every move, even to a special edition version of the video game. Now why would the friendly business suits in marketing want to get the yellow rodent's face on every conceivable item known to man, if he wasn't the best? I mean, Ash even chose to have him in the first episode of the cartoon!

And, with no background research at all I can state that the Pikachu car probably runs on electricity, just like himself, which means that Pikachu is also a way of cutting back on fossil fuels and reducing the effects of global warming. What other Pokémon is good for the environment? Not Charizard, that's for sure.




2.)Pikachu could murder Blastoise and Charizard

Even a level 1 Pikachu could KO a Blastoise with a single Thundershock, because electric is good against water. Anyone who knows Pokémon knows that fact. And you think your so called mighty Charizard could stomp our little mouse into mush just because its a fire type and about eight times the size. Well guess again: when Charmeleon evolves it becomes dual Fire/Flying, fortunately for our hero gaining a new weakness against electricity. Pikachu could send volts through Charizard with numbers more over-the-top that Colonel Volgin's speech from Metal Gear Solid 3, which would surge through his body and blast torrents of claret out of those little stumps he used to call wings before he even had the chance to rear his foot. I saw that happen on an episode once. Probably.




3.)Venusaur is called Penisaur

And for those of you who are too cool for the pocket monsters on the box and are currently thinking, “well, Venusaur's earthquake, a ground type move, could easily finish Pikachu in one hit,” no, you don't get off so easily. Everyone knows that ever since an early age Venusaur has been plagued with crippling emotional difficulties triggered by unfortunately easy to associate nicknames. From when the kids in the playground used to point and call him Ballsaresaur he's always had it hard. Sure there were a good couple of years in his teens as an Ivysaur, because not many rude words rhyme with ivy, but as adulthood kicked in he suddenly became the rotten egg of his peers again. All Pikachu would have to do is remind him of these darkened times, thus sending him back to the bottle and making him an easy target.

And don't give me any of that crap about Pikachu's not being able to say anything but incessantly warbling their own name, because I have proof on the contrary. For one, Mewtwo in the film could talk, proving that Pokémon do indeed know English, and Mewtwo is cloned from Mew, who is the origin of all Pokémon (piss off Arceus), and Pikachu is the distant spawn from the origin so it all makes sense.

Digimon can talk too, which is probably relevant in some way.


4.)Heart Gold and Soul Silver allow Pikachu to follow you around

Confirmed! Heart Gold and Soul Silver force you to have Pikachu behind you at all times. By that I mean you can choose from all four hundred and ninety-three Pokémon which one you want to have trailing you, but I may as well say force here because if Pikachu is a option, why would you choose anything else?

Yes, they've finally brought the best feature from any Pokémon adventure back, which they wouldn't have done if they didn't acknowledge Yellow to be the best of them all. You can even turn round and see if it likes you, which if it is a Pikachu it always will, and also will have sex with you on demand. It caters to all of your needs, because it is the best.


5.)Jim Sterling is bias and a troll and he is wrong and blah blah blah...

I took a random sample of about ten people in Stoke-on-Trent today asking how many of them thought Pokémon Red was actually better than Yellow, as his article clearly stated. Fortunately, the many slur words for homosexual and bruises to my left temple and ribcage I received went right through me, because I knew in my heart of hearts that they were really all meant for Jim, since it was his article I was surveying for. A friendly young couple I sat down with in Costa told me to “piss off,” which I almost think sounds like “Crystal.” They clearly misunderstood which generation of Pokémon I was asking about, but all was not lost as I managed to sip their expensive coffee as I sat down with them.

To be honest, I haven't even recognized Jim's article since the beginning because I don't want much space to allow such wrongness to seep into mine. However, I still feel it ultimately necessary to briefly point out his bias towards/against Pokémon Yellow for you all, because every time I type bitter, hateful things about Jim Sterling it gives me an erection, which almost makes up for my tiny penis and underdeveloped pubic zone.

I put towards and against in there because I'm not sure which one is grammatically correct in this context, and tend to use them interchangeably. Whichever the bad one is though, that's Jim.



Picture unrelated


6.)Team Rocket is in Yellow. No, not those black shirted goons in all of them. The REAL Team Rocket.

If its not already the best game ever, the fact that you can actually battle both Jessie AND James, WITH their Ekans and Koffing, IN FULL COLOUR, is the icing on this cherry. If any sentence was deserving of random capitals strewn all over the place, it would be the one explaining just that. Playing on a Game Boy Colour allows you to take full advantage of James' campy good looks and Jessie's shocking red hair, increasing immersion and making playing the game feel as if you're watching their wacky antics unfold right in front of your eyes. Even Meowth is present, but unfortunately, doesn't talk like he did in the animé. I ask you to suspend your disbelief for a second now, to take in the knowledge that not even Yellow has everything. What it does have though is far better than any other Pokémon title out there.

R.I.P. Maddie Blaustein


7.)EV's suck

You know what sucks? EV's, that's what. The one part that has spoiled Pokémon for most people miraculously wasn't in Yellow version, because when I was about ten years old and playing that game I didn't think about them, therefore they don't exist. I never played Red – I had Blue instead – so I can only assume that they were present in that game, adding more burning fuels to the fire that is Jim Sterling's wrongness about how Red is the best game in the world.




8.)Yellow is easier to masturbate to

Lets face it: anyone who was between the ages of around seven and eighteen in the late nineties probably watched Pokémon solely because they had a major crush on the voluptuous enchantress that was Cerulean Gym's Leader Misty, and I am now proud to announce that in Yellow version, she was hotter than ever. For the approximately six seconds that her full colour sprite is on screen, you could engage in your Misty related fantasies better than was before possible. What is under those shorts, I know you're wondering? Well, with a bit of blue on them, as opposed to those smelly black and grey pixels in Red, maybe that tether on your imagination can be taken further than you've ever managed. With little mental work, you'll have that skimpy bikini ripped right off her smooth slender back, allowing entry again through the golden gates of all those childhood fetishes you know you used to have.

Alternatively you could turn safe search off and look on the internet for relief to these fantasies, which contains many hardcore pictures depicting various degrees of Misty being clothed which I wouldn't know a thing about.


9.)Pikachu has no anus.

Did you ever see that episode of the cartoon where Pikachu swallows the apple whole and the doctor has to reach down into his throat as if he were a mouse-shaped vagina and pull it out whole? You get a full 360 degree shot of the 'Chu at that moment, and he doesn't have anything on his bottom: presumably storing and regurgitating all of his food as if his entire race has bulimia nervosa. Wasn't that the best thing you had ever seen in your life!


10.)I've seen all the banned episodes of the cartoon so I know more than you and my opinion is better than yours

As the kind of person who feels the need to validate his own opinion by stupidly trivial means, I went and did what no man in the world has ever done before, and searched all of the banned episodes of Pokémon on Youtube. If you in America think you're better than me because you got to see a poorly dubbed version of the episode where James from Team Rocket has breasts, guess again. I saw that version too, thanks to the magic of internet. I also know how Ash caught all those Tauros which had previously left a huge gap in the English series, so now I'm twice as better as you for that. I didn't die when I watched that Porygon episode with the flashing lights either, which probably means I'm some kind of superhuman with Godlike abilities. You will now fear me, or my Blaizeken will tear your head off. He does that.


Well, that's all for why Pokémon Yellow is the far better game out of the first trio and how Jim Sterling's personally-offensive-to-many-article on how Pokemon Yellow was the worst thing to ever come out of Satan's arsehole is completely wrong in every way. Though I'm sure there are many more reasons as to how this was the best, notwithstanding that you can have all three starters from the first game in this adventure, if you so choose. So its practically Red and Blue morphed together, to make some kind of super game.

And on that final note, I'll take my leave. Then escape to another country in case anyone discovers that I couldn't actually find the Jynx episode that was considered too racist to broadcast because she/it looks like a cross-dressing minstrel. I hope you've enjoyed your education!

Have you ever seen an Uwe Boll movie? The passionate director has garnered a lot of criticism over the last few years for his occasional tributes to videogaming, but until a few days ago when ITV4 was brave enough to show his 2005 adaptation of Alone in the Dark, I hadn't actually witnessed a lick of his work with my own eyes. My knowledge of this notorious man's works had up to then extended as far as: one; he likes to punch-out journalists, and two; his films are particularly bad. So curious, as I'd expect most to be as they enter into a Boll flick, I stayed up two hours past my bedtime in order to find out what all this time he has been all about. Carry on for my completely honest, completely unbiased, and slightly dirty first experience.

Alone in the Dark is a movie, with a lot of things that movies have in them. It runs for about ninety minutes, is shot using movie cameras, and stars people who may have at some point been in other movies. The game and film's hero, Edward Carnaby, is portrayed here by unwitting actor Christian Slater, and Tara Reid from Josie and the Pussycats and that episode of Scrubs is also in it. So far, so good, and I was shocked to find that my approval of this film didn't end there.

The film opens with something that I don't know because I was watching Peep Show on the other channel, but the first bit I do remember was a brilliantly executed fight scene in which Christian Slater engages in a battle of anti-gravity kung-fu with a tall, bearded man. This was very entertaining, and I could tell that Boll had put a lot of thought into crafting a hero the audience could believe in. Caranby's Jesus-like ability to push off flat from the ground with zero momentum, and then bicycle kick his antagonist in the face was rather impressive: we can tell that this is a man whose hands the world will be safe in. His subsequent power to land two direct gunshots to the bearded man's heart, firing through a block of fucking ice, and then have the man get up without so much as a struggle, was equally as impressive. Watching this piece of cinema unfold in front of my eyes was a very fun experience.

This first fight is also a stage for Boll to show off his tricksy use of slow motion. It appears that a rule was set at the beginning of shooting this scene, that if the slightest hint of damage was caused during a frame, it would be then slowed down in editing. Case in point: every damn thing goes slow at some point. If Slater gets chucked through a window, its getting slowed down. Thrown through a door? Hit the slow button, but just for a second or so. Brush up the side of an archway while walking through? You'd better believe that this bit is getting slowed right to hell. You can see where this is going.

But its okay, right, because slow motion is always a good, clever technique?


Christian Slater: rarely seen without that long brown coat. Even in the middle of summer! I guess if he took it off his self-esteem couldn't take it.

There is also a plot that comes in at some points. A scene near the beginning which takes place on a ship, shows an old man with a coffin made of gold, accompanied by a group of youngish, more muscular men. An interesting twist then occurs, in which the coffin is stolen by the young men who appeared friendly before. However, as an audience we are tipped off by this betrayal prior to its happening, due to the young persons large muscles and sunglasses of the central one: a smart move by the director. The old man then gets locked in a cabin and begs for the young men not to open the golden coffin, because he is wise, and that's what all old men are in half thought-out film plots, but the young men open it anyway, because that is what villains do in half thought-out film plots. Thus an unspeakable evil is released onto the world, and it is up to the gravity defying hero of the tale to save it.

If you find you are too stupid to keep up with this story, there are also narrations given by Christian Slater every so often in order to keep you up to speed. These usually amount to subtle references to his character in the video game of the same name, just in case you had forgotten that this was supposed to be based off a game in the first place.

Up to this point, Tara Reid has been in the film, playing a character whose name I don't know and can't even remember being mentioned at all in the script. To be brutally honest, I can only recall her having any spoken dialogue about three times during the entire run (and even the last of that is a little sketchy), the first of which being a phone conversation in which she is supposed to sound intelligent. Unfortunately, we already know that she is Tara Reid, so even if her character was delivered with more energy than the effortless reading-lines-off-the-smudge-on-the-back-of-her-hand guff that is presented here, we would still hark back to that girl we saw in American Pie and various pornographic sources. Giving Reid this limp, lifeless husk to go with was the first criticism I found in film, and in the next scene while she stared at Christian Slater's bare, man-like chest as he slept, I wondered if Boll would make an attempt to inject some life into her character before it ended.


Tara Reid has less dialogue than Bakura! He is clearly very happy about this.

On the note of Tara's failed character came an ad break, which I found rather refreshing as it allowed me to play Picopict (Pictobits in the USA) on my DSi; something I had been longing to do since around fifteen minutes into watching the main feature. My experience with this was quite good, it is definitely one of the better “Art Style” series titles, and I would definitely recommend you download it. Various sized coloured blocks fall down the screen, and the aim of the game is to match the colours into groups of four or more smaller shapes, which wipes them away to form a classic NES sprite on the top screen. You move blocks around using the stylus, either by storing them for later use, or releasing them onto empty spaces for blocks to fall on to, hopefully linking them together and causing them to disappear. The real skill however comes from chaining your blocks for massive combos, which requires much precision stylus work and a lot of quick thinking. Clearing most of a massive block off the screen and knowing that it was your own work is an immensely satisfying thrill; better though is the games soundtrack, which is made up of remixes from old 8-bit Nintendo games. When I got to the final stage of this package I was amazed at how much content I had already gone through for a 500 point game (and at how much more there was to unlock!). There's no place better to spend half of the 1000 points you get free with the system, but even without that, you could do a lot worse for your three gold coins and one oddly shaped silver coin. Or five bucks.

The most intriguing thing I salvaged from this time though, was when my concentration was drawn to the sound of Donnie Darko 2 which I had no idea even existed. The original is one of my favourite movies of all time, and the idea of a sequel - past the prior thoughts of how they could fit Jake Gyllenhall back into it – was quite nice. I mean there's no way they could ruin something as great as Donnie Darko. After having his vision interpreted to cinema with acclaim and a degree of perfection in the first one, Richard Kelley would never allow that to happen. This was definitely something which demanded further research.


It's easy. Touch the blocks to store them, then release them when necessary! Simple! Yet it gets fiendishly tricky later on.

After about seven minutes into one of the difficult remixes of Picopict I realized that before I turned it on I was supposed to be watching a film or something. There had been no audio prompts for me to believe that there was anything but adverts on the TV, so I was very surprised when I turned my head up to find a sex scene, at what I fully expected by soundtrack alone to be one of those British sofa advertisements. It quickly became clear that one thing Boll cannot do for the life of him is appropriate music; when its possible to mistake the power and emphasis of a couple making love for a DFS advert, you must be getting something wrong. However, I have to hand it to him for this bit of audio trickery, because people watching his film on a station with breaks in between can enjoy playing their handheld console for a little bit longer and not have to be cued into watching these two planks of wood rubbing up against each other. With that, he's also just helped me come up with the perfect analogy for the film so far, so I must thank him again for inspirations sake.

The plot continues with Carnaby being given special bullets that can kill the evil creatures, and a special flash light whose illumination is tailored to keep them at a distance. Now, at this point I thought Boll had dropped the ball yet again. Its not as if the scientists creating this special light or special bullets had anything to test them on? They haven't exactly captured a demon to wave it around on and say, “here, this works.” No, all they can do is hope that what they've made is effective, and send Carnaby in there while they book their vacation for the next ten years! Am I really supposed to suspend my disbelief that far!

Then I had a thought. Well, how do scientists ever accurately predict how many billions of light years away a star is, or global warming, or how some of the planets are made entirely of gas? If they've never been there or seen it first hand, how can they possibly know? On that contemplation, I just sat back, realized I don't have the first clue when it comes to maths, equations and all that stuff, and just assumed that the scientists making these magic weapons had spend the better part of their lives studying demonology and had managed to devise an equation on the matter that just worked. I guess Boll won that round. He is deep in thought on these matters after all.


That placticine monster is really in for a killing now.

Sadly, not all of Boll's movie could be as engaging as it has been up to now, and when the director exemplified his lack of skill with audio as a group of military men enter the demon compound to the sound of heavy metal and gunfire, I turned my attention back to the DS and used its browser to look up Donnie Darko 2. I was in disbelief as I discovered it had been heard of since May last year, and was already available on DVD in the States! How knowledge of the film managed to evade me for this long was annoying, but a nice surprise at the same time. Not a nice surprise on the other hand, was the negative reception to its release. Its a shame it sucks, but I'll watch it nevertheless. How could they possibly make a decent follow-up to Donnie Darko anyway? On a side note, it appeared that the American title, S. Darko, won't be re-used over here, instead going with the shadier, more sequel-like Donnie Darko 2. I expect many people to feel disappointed after it is released in cinemas soon.

When I got back to the film everyone was trapped underground in some kind of cave. Tara Reid spoke the second piece of dialogue that I remember here, which is as she is translating some ancient squiggles on a rock, which directly say, and I quote, “Once you make it alive down here, you're already dead.” I thought this was a rather skilled way of showing why Reid's character is so hollow, as we now know that she must have lived her whole life as a shut-in working on somehow translating these old pictures into English words, that it sucked her dry of any personality she may have ever had. Next there's a bit where Carnaby is struggling to shoot a demon worm thing which I found hard to believe since he shot a guy with accuracy two times through a block of ice at the beginning, someone with their head split open which raised a chuckle, an old man I'm not sure if I've seen before goes nuts, and a follow through to one of the most hopeless endings that I've ever seen. Hopeless in the respect that its both quite a bad note to climax on, and that presumably the aliens/demons won and in that last shot where the camera zooms right into their faces, ripped them to pieces and ate their flesh. It would certainly make sense, since I can think of no other reason as to why Slater and Reid won't be associating themselves with the 2009 sequel, and instead have Carnaby and whatever-her-name-was be played by other actors. After they were feasted upon, some other people must have been born with their same names or something, and now they have to save the day. Or something.


I don't think either of them were entirely sure why they were there.

Final Thoughts

It sucks, and I cannot believe it. The thought that a sub-par Donnie Darko sequel exists in this world just hurts my heart. I just hope that the rumoured second sequel, with Richard Kelly's involvement, will receive better support than this one has. Yes, I will go and see it as soon as I can, and I really hope that I'll enjoy it. Its just sad to know that whatever shows itself to me on that cinema screen, has little to no chance of surpassing what is one of my most loved films, like I hoped a sequel would.

And buy Picopict. Its awesome.


There's a Nightwish song if you manage it to the credits. I guess his musical taste isn't completely hopeless after all.